I’m a professor at Case Western Reserve University where I teach and research entrepreneurship. Like all academics, I have several degrees and have written a bunch of scholarly articles that only academics have read (we have to get tenure, you know). But I’ve also written several popular books – the best known of which is Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live by (Yale University Press, 2008) – and a variety of columns and blogs. One of the (few?) things these experiences have taught me is how to present and discuss data on entrepreneurship and small business. I do that in a weekly blog called “Smart Charts.”

Some small business owners still getting credit

In the wake of the credit tightening that occurred during the financial crisis and the Great Recession, many small company owners have complained that they cannot obtain enough financing to meet their business needs. However, others have managed to access these funds, a recent study conducted by Denny Dennis of the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) shows.

Dennis looked at the proportion of small businesses that obtained all, some, or none of the credit that they needed over the previous 12 months, using data collected from a 2011 survey of 850 small business owners drawn from Dun and Bradstreet credit files and designed to represent the population of all small businesses in the country. As the figure below indicates, Dennis found that slightly more than one third of small businesses received all of the credit that they sought and only one fifth did not get any of it.

Source: Created from data from “Small Business, Credit Access, and a Lingering Recession”

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.